A website may recommend information relating to a commodity to a user over the Internet. By way of example, an electronic commerce website may recommend commodity supply and demand information to a user. Since there is a tremendous amount of information available to recommend to a user but only a limited amount time that the user has to spend at a website, the user would benefit from receiving information that is specific to his or her interest.
To this end, prior art determines which information to provide a user at a website based on data that the user registers with the website or based on the user's IP address. Taking an electronic commerce website as an example, the data registered by a user with the website may include the vocation, income interval, type of commodity of interest, and a personal hobby of the user. Information on a commodity to be provided to the user may be decided from such recorded information. Moreover, information on a commodity to be provided to the user may be decided based on the geographical characteristic of the user's IP address.
However, the foregoing practice may be restricting during practical operation of a website. Firstly, a user may register information that may be false or incomplete and some of the information may vary over time. For example, the income interval of the user may vary, and in most cases, the user will not update such personal information. Secondly, the product that is of interest to the user may vary with time and may also vary with his or her employer. In some cases, a different employer could mean that the user will change his or her purchasing patterns. Such variance in information is impossible to predict at the user's initial registration with a website. Lastly, determining to provide information to the user based on the user's IP address is also unreliable because the mere knowledge of the geographic location of the user does not clearly define the scope of commodities that is of interest to the user. Furthermore, the actual location of the user may be different from what can be inferred from his or her IP address alone. Consequently, it may be difficult in the current practice to provide a user with the product information that is actually of interest to the user.